CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-06-19 00:22:52 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Oh look, another Google person is peeking at my LinkedIn profile. +Vic Gundotra, you guys should hire me.  You know you want to.
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2013-06-19 00:18:58 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

I'm randomly networking on LinkedIn with people in my contacts list. Heh.
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2013-06-18 23:44:35 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Oh great, I launched this IMO app on Android to check it out and I think I may have blasted my contacts with invites.  FUGG.  I think I'm devolving into a noob.
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2013-06-18 23:34:57 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

These guys are not new, they've been saying the same stuff for a while that's all over Youtube.  But this is a recent video interview with Drake & Binney.   They basically back up Snowden.

It's turning into a wall of NSA whistleblowers.  I suspect the wall is only going to grow in length.  These are the ethical types that you want at the NSA methinks, not guys that seem unintelligent like General Alexander.

I imagine all the smarter people at the NSA that must make jokes about Alexander.  To my thinking, this is not how you wanna run an organization of this type.

I'm sure Alexander is a nice guy and worked up the chain by being friendly and politically correct, but this isn't really the best model IMHO.

#NSA

2013-06-18 23:26:23 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

#Snowden  

2013-06-18 23:27:45 (14 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

This seems to suggest that perhaps Snowden is not working alone in terms of leaking.  He could just be the face of the leak. Unless, NSA has copies of this on their servers that Snowden could get to.  Or, if he hacked DoJ/FBI somehow. 

Which raises and interesting question, does the NSA snoop on the other branches of the executive? Or do they totally stay out of it.  They seem to work closely with the FBI.

Regardless, these kind of articles give you the impression that they're assume that it could not have been Snowden that got the Verizon FISA order.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/18/fbi-looks-for-leaks-at-foreign-intelligence-surveillance-court.html
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2013-06-18 22:35:58 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

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2013-06-18 20:40:39 (3 comments, 1 reshares, 4 +1s)

BREAKING NEWS: +Google challenges U.S. gag order on data requests, cites First Amendment http://wapo.st/14h10jL

2013-06-18 20:01:08 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Akin

John Bolton equates Snowden to Benedict Arnold, as if to say that the US v China is the same thing as the Continental Army v British during the Revolutionary War.

"...this is akin to Benedict Arnold scheming to betray West Point's defenses to the British, thereby allowing them to seize a key American fortification, splitting the colonies geographically at a critical point during the American Revolution."

To make the analogy more complete, Benedict Arnold would have to have betrayed the US by exposing a betrayal of the US against the British.  And/or the US would need to be at war with China.
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2013-06-18 19:40:35 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 3 +1s)

Rape-stalking the Constitution

When a women thinks she is going to be raped, she can't usually do anything legally until she shows injury and get's a restraining order, which is mildly effective depending on the attacker.  That's the logic here.

In a 5–4 opinion authored by Justice Samuel Alito, the Court held that the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the constitutionality of the statute because they failed to establish that they would suffer an “imminent” injury traceable to the law. Id. The Court found that the plaintiffs’ fear of future injury from surveillance was “highly speculative,” since they offered no evidence that they had actually been subjected to surveillance.

This injury due to actual surveillance evidence is the biggest missing piece to all of Snowden's argument. I'd suspect that he'd be following this sortof case. Als... more »

2013-06-18 20:08:59 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Interesting technicality

Okay so in Congress today a Representative asked Gen. Alexander what this Snowden remark meant:

"This is the precise reason that NSA provides Congress with a special immunity to its surveillance."

And they joked that they had no clue, and said it was "special respect" or something.   I'm guessing what Snowden meant by this was that the separation of powers means that the Executive branch cannot have the NSA/FBI listen in on Congress.   This means that he is aware that the NSA's programs are specifically coded to make sure not to cross paths with Congress.  If this was true, it's an acknowledgement that the SOCTUS exception for business records doesn't work to support the NSA doing the same thing to Congress.

This was also Snowden's final remark.  It seems pretty telling that the Congressdidn&... more »

2013-06-18 19:07:38 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

President +Barack Obama could choose to give blanket immunity to every single private contractor that is a system administrator currently at NSA and offer that they come forward to Congress and either refute Snowden or refute their supervisors in a way that doesn't reveal classified information.

There's only a thousand of them.
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2013-06-18 19:01:29 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 0 +1s)

A questioner specifically asked Edward Snowden:

"What evidence do you have that refutes the assertion that the NSA is unable to listen to the content of telephone calls without an explicit and defined court order from FISC?"

And he didn't answer it.  I suspect he gave an answer, but that Greenwald chose not t publish it.  No reference to this question in the terse answer.  It could be an insurance policy and a way of sending a message.  His answer was that the country was "worth dying for" in answering the questioner's previous question.
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2013-06-18 18:56:36 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Wow, these are brutally honest statements against Obama.

"Binney, Drake, Kiriakou, and Manning are all examples of how overly-harsh responses to public-interest whistle-blowing only escalate the scale, scope, and skill involved in future disclosures. Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they'll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it. Instead, these draconian responses simply build better whistleblowers."

"If the Obama administration responds with an even harsher hand against me, they can be assured that they'll soon find themselves facing an equally harsh public response."

"This disclosure provides Obama an opportunity to appeal for a return to sanity, constitutional policy, and the rule of law rather than men. He still has plenty of time to go down in history as the President who looked into... more »

2013-06-18 18:50:57 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

"It's important to bear in mind I'm being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American."

"If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school."

-Edward Snowden
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2013-06-18 18:30:05 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.
-Edward Snowden

From his perspective, the smart thing to do is withhold his most damning evidence until the NSA has responded to Congress and provided more statements that can be refuted.

So the first releases were just an opening salvo in PR terms.
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2013-06-18 18:12:37 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 0 +1s)

So, did we lose the ability to get a full list of G+ notifications? Or might that old URL still work?

Ah:
You click or right-click the bell.  I should have figured this out on my own.
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2013-06-18 17:57:50 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

More dots?

The idea that they didn't have the information to "connect the dots" and prevent 9-11 seems to be a potentially flawed premise.  It seems like they had the information, they just didn't either bother to connect or communicate the connecting of the dots they actually connected.
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2013-06-18 17:20:58 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Clinton is great, but let's be honest.  If he had Bush's two terms, chances are that the failures would have still occurred and he would not be as popular.  Clinton floats on a balanced budget that he achieved with Newt, or in spite of him.

But the biggest question is whether 9-11 would have happened, and if the Patriot Act would have been signed in the way it was.
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2013-06-18 17:00:46 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Snow

"Telephony metadata includes comprehensive communications routing information, including but not limited to session identifying information (e.g. originating and terminating telephone number, International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number, International Mobile station Equipment Identity (IMEI), etc."

General Alexander of the NSA has told the Congress another false statement today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Mobile_Station_Equipment_Identity

The IMEI number is used by a GSM network to identify valid devices and therefore can be used for stopping a stolen phone from accessing that network. For example, if a mobile phone is stolen, the owner can call his or her network provider and instruct them to "blacklist" the phone using its IMEI number. This renders the phone useless on that network and... more »

2013-06-18 16:50:35 (6 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

The NSA Director Gen. Alexander just said that you cannot get a location on a person from their Verizon phone records "not beyond an area" code, ignoring the ability to find a phone using it's IMEI number, which is in the meta data.  This is specifically how lost phones are located using cloud services like Apple.

None of the Congressional Representatives focused on this field in the meta data.
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2013-06-18 16:30:04 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

I fully expect that Edward Snowden is going to make a Youtube video or something that documents a few basic things about the NSA that totallly refute General Alexander.

I wouldn't be surprised if Snowden doesn't actually have a backup of the database tables, etc. of the system that they use as a server service.   He could probably show this running on his laptops.  If he was able to get information out, it just remains to be seen how much actual volume of data he could get out in terms of gigabytes.

He wouldn't have the data, but he could have a server backup for the code.  He could populate some test data and show how it totally works, as well as how easily it is to break the audits. etc. which are probably a total joke. 
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2013-06-18 16:18:31 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Earnest Hemingway: ‘He was a failed KGB spy’
http://topinfopost.com/2013/06/18/earnest-hemingway-he-was-a-failed-kgb-spy

2013-06-18 16:16:42 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

General Alexander is a moron.

He says the public should be amazed at the ridiculous oversight on trillions of records for a mere 300 queries or "selectors," and never any misuse.  He thinks we'll actually believe that they did all this for only 300 queries.

#NSA #PRISM  

2013-06-18 15:42:53 (10 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

All Snowden has to do is show how a system administrator can break a database audit.  I'm guessing that the NSA contractors are using Oracle or something.   I'm guessing that this can be done with a backup/staging db cluster node of some sort.  If they're crunching big data they're using clusters and admins can certainly segregate a node and query it before restoring and syncing tables.

All of the Congressional oversight is seriously lacking in technical knowledge about what it means to be a system administrator.

They've also revealed that nearly all of NSA's sysadmins are outside contractors.
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2013-06-18 14:11:55 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Maybe this is actually creating a new industry.
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2013-06-18 13:57:32 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Ah damn, I missed this Snowden Q&A.  Looks like guardian is copying Reddit's AMA somewhat.
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2013-06-18 16:44:37 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

NSA is back today at 10am EDT on the hill

It seems like the White House is just waiting out Snowden to see what he'll release.  Since it's been a while and the world hasn't crashed down, they're trying to do some damage control.

In addition to the sudden weekend Charlie Rose piece, it appears that the White House is moving to respond to the NSA stuff by having the NSA testify again before Congress.  They've probably declassified more information and they're going to argue that they've foil some more plots using this critical PRISM program.

Senator Leahy asked Alexander for specific instances where the program was "critical" and the given/known instances have since been proven to be things that were discovered largely through other means.

It also looks like the Benghazi issue will flare up again June 26 when GeneralH... more »

2013-06-18 13:45:03 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

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2013-06-18 13:43:52 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 4 +1s)

Turkish ‘standing man’ inspires silent vigil in restive square

+Reuters : A Turkish man held an 8-hour silent vigil on Monday in Istanbul’s restive Taksim Square. 

Erdem Gunduz decided to start his silent protest as a form of peaceful demonstration against violent police disruption of protests in the square over the last two weeks.

Gunduz stood on his own unnoticed before pictures of his protest went viral. By the time police cleared the square at 2 a.m. local time, about 300 others had joined him.

Read more: http://nbcnews.to/19ftMEC

Follow the latest on the protests in Turkey at BreakingNews.com: http://bit.ly/18GfRtA

Photo: Erdem Gunduz stood for several hours unnoticed before his presence on the flashpoint square went viral on the social network Twitter. (Marco Longari/AFP - Getty Images)

2013-06-18 13:15:34 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

If anyone has or knows of any good purely telecommuting web development jobs, either contract/temp is fine, please let me know.   I'm looking to get back into the swing of things after being on an extended sabbatical.
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2013-06-18 12:29:22 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 8 +1s)

New Microscope Optics Completely Destroy Diffraction Barrier–Revealing a Whole New Understanding of Cells

Microscopes were first invented in 1590 by two eyeglass makers later to have the term, “Microscope” coined by  Giovanni Faber coined the name microscope for Galileo Galilei‘s compound microscope in 1625. We now commonly use the modern light microscope that we’ve all probably played with at some point in our early schooling.
http://hardsciencenews.com/2013/06/17/new-microscope-optics-completely-destroy-diffraction-barrier-revealing-a-whole-new-understanding-of-cells/

2013-06-18 05:53:07 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 4 +1s)

Full interview.

#Obama

2013-06-18 05:48:10 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

President +Barack Obama sounds sincere, but he is not admitting to his "first thing" promise about reversing him on Bush activities. So, I am forced to perceive this a political maneuvering.

I'm looking forward to them declassifying more stuff, but I have my doubts. Snowden is probably not done leaking either. And the phone program != the from the server PRISM program.
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2013-06-17 14:16:38 (3 comments, 3 reshares, 6 +1s)

A good inspiration from today's youth.  Be yourself, do something different, don't follow the crowd!

2013-06-17 14:12:27 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 0 +1s)

2013-06-17 14:01:06 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 0 +1s)

Paywall models are stupid.  So, I'm sharing this post:

The president’s approval was down 8 points from May, to 45 percent from 53 percent, according to a new CNN/ORC International poll. Fifty-four percent of those surveyed disapproved, up 9 points from CNN’s polling in May.

Yea, I had to read it incognito because they say I've read 10 articles already.  And, even though I'm re-sharing the article. What is even more stupid is that this article is basically barfing up an already public article:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/06/17/cnn-poll-obama-approval-falls-amid-controversies/

You'd think that they'd want to make the paywall access conditional on whether I'm re-sharing the article on social media.  This just strikes me as a very self-defeating logic.  If they had a button that made reading the full article conditional onsharing... more »

2013-06-17 13:41:49 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

The defense is filing a motion to remove sustained barrier to Attorney-client communications and prohibit monitoring of their communications in holding cells, meeting facilities, etc.

If they're recording what they say, I presume that they can just hand this over to whoever is prosecuting their case.

These guys are probably the ones that are guilty and should get what is coming to them, but under such a mechanism, you could probably convict anyone of anything if the defense attorney was stupid enough to reveal their defense while being recorded.
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2013-06-17 13:17:08 (10 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

I don't want officers to die, but I'm just curious how many officers get shot or shot at in Chicago, usually.  It seems like it's usually the case when someone is shot that they've not even fired a shot, as in there's no exchange.
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2013-06-17 12:58:41 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

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2013-06-17 12:32:16 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Love Woz.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57589534-71/woz-this-is-not-my-america/
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2013-06-17 12:27:30 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

If PRISM is FISA requests and not direct access to the servers, then they never would have written the slide the way it was written.  This still leaves an open question whether NSA has covert direct access to their servers.

For example, conversations which take place over iMessage and FaceTime are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can see or read them. Apple cannot decrypt that data.

This is the holy grail for NSA.  The metadata can be terribly useful, but the #1 source for information for the NSA has to be content.  Somehow, they're decrypting stuff like this, probably by infecting smartphone/pcs with malware.

And if they are able to do this, they will fight to the end to retain this capability, and to keep it secret.
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2013-06-17 12:10:11 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Google+ plus appears to be turning into an operating system GUI of sorts.  The horizontal black menu, and the horizontal white menu, with "Trash" for photos, etc. along with the horizontal menu, reminds me a lot of the Mac OS.
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2013-06-17 04:46:33 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

One of the best shows.
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2013-06-14 23:33:12 (3 comments, 4 reshares, 19 +1s)

My face to the world when I discover my coffee is empty. #mfw  

2013-06-14 23:29:17 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Things are tough all over sometimes, even for a Sith Lord.

Hey, a man's gotta eat, and he can't always be out there crushing the Rebel Alliance. :XD

#starwars   #darthvader   #deadendjob   #sithlord   #payingthebills  

via/ P

2013-06-14 23:27:58 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

Should name this guy Pavlov.

2013-06-14 23:14:57 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

#Snowden #Congress  

2013-06-14 23:12:45 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

The NSA programs that Snowden has revealed are nothing new: they date back to the days and weeks after 9/11. I had direct exposure to similar programs, such as Stellar Wind, in 2001. In the first week of October, I had an extraordinary conversation with NSA’s lead attorney. When I pressed hard about the unconstitutionality of Stellar Wind, he said:

“The White House has approved the program; it’s all legal. NSA is the executive agent.”

It was made clear to me that the original intent of government was to gain access to all the information it could without regard for constitutional safeguards. “You don’t understand,” I was told. “We just need the data.”

#Snowden #NSA #PRISM  

2013-06-14 23:08:05 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

This summary sounds legit.

#Snowden